Category Archives: Memory Lane

Today marks the 5th year that this blog has been in operation (or $450 later in hosting costs for something I post to like once a month or twice a month if I’m feeling saucy). So to celebrate the 5th year of this “sometimes updated blog on pop culture”, I decided randomly to look at the number 5 as in the fifth installment of movies, games and albums to look at what I consider to be some of the best, worst and meh. The 5th installment of things either was forgettable (Nightmare on Elm Street 5, The Amazing Spider-Man 2), Unnecessary (countless direct to video sequels), horribly awesome (Leprechaun in the Hood), or just as a chance to start fresh (X-men First Class, Batman Begins, Friday the 13th 5 which was literally called “A New Beginning”). So the number 5 is pretty fun to look at. Instead of looking at 5…5s, I just did 10 because if you’ve read this site before you’ll know consistency isn’t gonna happen! Lets take a look! (READ MORE)

Sometimes after seeing a movie, we want to see what a character’s family might be like. Usually it pays off: Greg Focker’s parents were fun, we enjoyed meeting all the Assholes in Spaceballs, Indiana Jones’ son Mutt wasn’t bad (the movie was), and Jack Sparrow and Austin Powers both had fun fathers to meet. Usually we get to meet a character’s family by way of sequels or via a spin-off movie or TV show. Spin-off movies and TV shows have something of an interesting win-loss record. Family Matters, Frazier, Daria and Darkwing Duck were all Spin-offs that arguably equated or overshadowed the shows and movies that they spun-off from. However, sometimes meeting the family isn’t what it’s all cut out to be. Here’s 6 of them we were better off not meeting: (READ MORE)

The Simpsons have been around for 25 years. They’ve been around for 4 presidential administrations (3 of which served 2 terms each), outlived numerous TV shows, and contributed to several pop culture history-making moments. In addition they’ve stared in several videogames spanning since the old NES games, had a Lego set, fictional food products to tie into their movie, and theme park rides. The 552 episodes began airing non-stop yesterday on FXX and with the addition of The Simpson’s movie, it will take 12 full days to go through the entire catalog. Unfortunately sleep and work will likely get in the way of many fun episodes, so if you are the owner of a DVR, this is when you get to put it to major work. Although a few super-early classics such as “Stark Raving Dad”, “Flaming Moe’s”, “Bart Gets and F” have already passed through, there’s still plenty to be excited about in the coming days of the mega-marathon. Like many fans, I believe the show’s best years are definitely behind them, but staying on the air since 1990 is no small task….there’s people drinking in bars now that weren’t even born when the show first aired. So among reliving the show’s best days, it’s also kind of nice to see a few episodes that I’ve missed in the mid-2000s when I mostly stopped watching. As I’ve mentioned earlier, it’ll be impossible to binge-watch all the episodes, so here’s a few of my suggestions for which episodes to catch during the marathon (or to DVR as some of these will be in the late night and wee hours of Friday night and Saturday morning.) (READ FULL STORY)

VH1 once again put on the rose colored glasses to take a look at another decade with their popular “I love the…” series. Previous installments focusing on the 70s, 80s and 90s became popular hit series. This time around we take a look back to a decade that ended just 4 years ago with “I love the 2000s”. It’s easy to argue that not enough time has passed for the nostalgia to settle in, but to be fair, I must point out that they took a look at the 90s in 2003 or so, which at the time seemed to be too soon to reflect back then.

However, one of the many problems with this new series is that they kind of already did this show back in 2008 with “I love the New Millennium” before the decade even ended which covered 2000-2007. I vaguely remember watching a little bit of it and not ever tuning back in for the rest of the series due to it seeming too soon to look back on things that happened only a few years before. So due to that desensitization, I wasn’t as pumped for this new series as I remember being with the prior incarnations. As a pop culture blogger, I did my duty and watched the full series and while I’m glad that some events were covered, there were plenty of events ignored that I wasn’t too happy about. So here’s my list of what I felt like would have been great inclusions. (READ MORE)

Hey 80s/90s kids! Think of when you were growing up and the cartoon “The Real Ghostbusters” was all the rage. Are you following me so far? Good! Now, think of the action figures, think of the proton pack and the rich kid that had both the Proton pack AND the ghost trap. Don’t think about how you’d like to time travel to dick punch them for being smug, but DO think of all the nostalgia. After playing Ghostbusters, or when it was lunch time do you remember the ultimate drink you HAD to have? If you guessed Ecto Cooler, you win bragging rights…if you said something else; you’re a freak and I assume you have no soul, because there is no other right answer.

Now, time travel to the present. Beer may have replaced Ecto Cooler as your favorite drink, but if you decide to be nostalgic about it, I got bad news for you: Ecto Cooler has been discontinued since 2007 (Slimer himself left in 1997…a full six years after the cartoon was cancelled!) While it may live on with awesome memories, some people really, really miss the hell out of it! Some have launched full scale investigations! However, one group of rabid Ghostbuster fans made what they claim is the perfect clone of the beloved Ecto Cooler.

As part of PopCultureAsylum’s countdown to Halloween (and a motivating tool for me to update this site more frequently), I’ve decided to try to mimic this clone recipe. Here’s how it turned out:

In my goal to try to have more posts on this site, I decided the other night to compile another Memory Lane segment. They are easy to write, I can make some awesome and funny homages to my life as a product of the 90s and 80s, and this crap is awesome and fun to rant about even if nobody reads my site anymore! So as with all my entries in this series there’s a few rules (because I feel it enhances the articles)

1. I must be buzzed and I need to find things that were cool back in the day and just go on a crazy rant about them (mostly this is like a fun porch talk or bar talk being re-created). Don’t judge me; F. Scott Fitzgerald did this too and he made The Great Gatsby as a result….my “work” isn’t even required reading.

2. I can in no way or form add things to the list the following morning when I edit the articles. So for example, when I get some sleep and think “oh I should have added that that 90s rap group Tag Team’s song “whoop there it is” to the list”….I can’t do it as it is against the rules.

Anyway hoping this doesn’t grow stale anytime soon (mostly b/c it’s easy to write and probably the most popular series on this site) here’s my latest late night adventure down Memory Lane:

Sooo I decided to rant tonight, and what a better way than to make a third installment of Memory Lane? If this is your first trip down PopCultureAsylum.com‘s Memory Lane series, here’s the “rules” of making these entries. I must be buzzed and I need to find things that were cool back in the day and just go on a crazy rant about them (mostly this is like a fun porch talk or bar talk being re-created). I can in no way or form add things to the list the following morning when I edit the articles. So for example, when I get some sleep and think “oh I should have added that Danish pop group Aqua that sang “Barbie Girl” to the list”….I can’t do it as it is against the rules. Anyway hoping this doesn’t grow stale anytime soon (mostly b/c it’s easy to write and probably the most popular series on this site) here’s the latest walk down Memory Lane:

Last week I decided to make what is probably the pop culturiest article to date for this site/blog with a look back at stuff from childhood. It was meant to be a photographic journey down memory lane, but for some reason I couldn’t stop talking about everything I posted a picture of and it sort of became a big pop-culture filled rant entry!!! So I decided that I am now doing part II in a yet-to-be-determined-but-possibly-endless photographic journey through childhood! Same rules as before: I must have 3 drinks (this time some of my home-brewed Irish porter!) and go on a rant about stuff that was cool when I was a kid. Like before, I’ll wait til the next morning to post it to weed out grammatical errors, and probably think of things WAY better than the selections I’ve made, but I’ll be forbidden to include anything else b/c that’s how it works. So here’s part 2 of our trip down memory lane

I originally wanted to just make this a cool photo essay but I just couldn’t shut the hell up about how much I love these things!!! Getting all nostalgic for this article opened up a floodgate of memories. However, I didn’t want this to go on forever so we’ll dub this part one of what will be a several part series here on PopCultureAsylum.com. I also wrote this on St. Paddy’s night , hence the randomness of it all (maybe I should write more stuff while buzzed, it should be a rule like “must have 3 drinks before writing” or something). Anyway lets look at some old cool stuff!!!